Web questions- saving threads?

[DFrank]

How can one save a thread for future refference?



I frequently read stuff that I know I'll want to read later, but then can't always find it.



It would be neat if there was a spot within the site to drag and drop links to threads for future references.



I spent 1/2 an hour last night looking for pics of pyro installations to figure out exactly where to drill. I know i have seen several of these in the last few weeks, but was unable to locate one now.



It would also be cool to have a spot dedicated to custom installs. It could have categories for different items and have people's personal directions or photos grouped together for easy refference.



Sorry if this is not the right forum to make these suggestions, but did not see where else would be more appropriate.



I think this site is very well run, and this is just one suggestion for a slight improvement.



Thanks for listening.

 

[SRadke]

You may try posting this in the "TDR Website/Roundtable" forum as well. Steve watches that one like a hawk. Perhaps a kind moderator will move it for us.



-Scott

 

[Vaughn MacKenzie]

DFrank, there is a couple ways I save threads to come back.



First way is if it's one I want to refer back to but not necessarily save for long-term, I simply open a Notepad file and copy & paste the address bar link in there. I like Notepad because it doesn't try to create the annoying hyperlinks in the document that Word does.



I then add labels or comments so I know what the link is and then save the Notepad file. Then later when I refer to it I copy and paste in the address bar and go straight to it.



Another thing I do if I want to save a thread, I just go to File-->Save at the top left of the page and save the whole webpage to my hard drive. You have to do a new file for each one, and for each page if it's more than 1 page long.



When I save to my hard drive I save it in . mht format ("Web Page Single File"). That way it doesn't create a new folder with separate files for every single bitmap image within the page, but your document looks OK once you pull it back up.



Hope this helps!



Vaughn

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

There isn't any easy way to implement this on the site. What I and most people do is put links that I wish to keep track of in my favorites. In your favorites you can create subfolders to organize the links and then add links you wish to keep track of to there. That gives you more options for sorting them, putting them in sub folders, etc than anything on the site ever could. Another option is that you can email a link to yourself by clicking on the "Email this Page" link just below the quick reply box. You could put some basic text in there explaining what the thread is, etc. Then when you receive it you can put it in a sub folder in your email program and then you could search on it.



I'm also moving this to the website forum for others to find easier.

 

[DFrank]

Thanks to both of you. Each of those techniques will work fine for me. I know how to do that, but I gues I'm not quite web-savy enough to have realized how easy that will be.



One other thing I'm not sure how to or if you can implement, is to always open threads Ive seen already to the newest post. There are topics that i would like to read the new stuff for, but end up wasting too much time rereading posts I have already read, so If I'm in a hurry I skip right by them.



Thanks again, I really enjoy the time I spend here.



Dave

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

Click on the down arrow in the subject line and it will take you straight to the first new post .

 

[DFrank]

Thanks, I didn't know about that. the arrow is not always available though, even on threads I know I have browsed, any explanation?



I also Had never scrolled all the way down to have spotted the website forum.



Back to my earlier suggestion, Is there any sort of index to the readers rig gallery? If I wanted to see photos ofsay a lifted truck or a certain tire or other BOMB, it would be sweet to be able to find it an a "readers rig search" or something similiar. Is that presently available?

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

The down arrow is only shown on new posts since you were last on. The system has a 30 minute window for if this is a new visit or not. If you leave the site for more than 30 minutes then your "last visit" time will reset. Any threads that have a post newer than your "last visit" time will have the down arrow on them which specifies that they are a new post and clicking on that down arrow takes you to the first post after that time. Make sense?



On the reader's rigs there is no index available right now. We're working on a site redesign that will update the graphics and bring some new features. A new reader's rigs section may be part of that.

 

[DFrank]

It makes sense, but does me little good. I don't know much about web technology, but it seems like the computer ought to know what I have actually looked at already and be able to open up to the first reply that I have not already seen. I never have time to read everything, and there are frequently topics that i would revisit every so often, but especially when the topic has many pages it is such a waste of time to find the right place to start, that i frequently ignore the post entirely and read a few others in the amount of time it would have taken me to find where to start on the older one.



Don't take this as a complaint, just sharing my thoughts on where something has room to be improved. I love the site, but a compliments don't help improve it.

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

There's really no way to do that. First off the server has no way of knowing what you've read and haven't read - it could only know if it's sent a page to you or not. That isn't even practical to keep of because of the number of records that would take. We have over 19,000 users and 760,000 posts. If we were to keep track of each post that had been sent to you that would be over 14 Billion records to add to the database. Going by your last login time is the only practical way of doing it.

 

[DFrank]

Not trying to beat a dead horse here steve, but on basic web sites that i visit I notice things that I have previously clicked on in different colors. I have no idea if this is something the remote site keeps track of or if its something my computer figures out on its own. I'm not complaining that it doesn't work here, just not sure what the technical differences are. I'm sure we all agree that what I am asking for would be sweet if it could be easily implimented. I certainly understand that your server doesn't need to keep tabs on everybody.

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

That's because they are "static" html pages. The same thing will happen on our site for most of the pages outside of the forums. The problem is that with dynamically built pages such as the forums the address of the page stays the same no matter how many replies there are. So your machine would "think" you've read completely any thread that you've read even if it only had one reply then and now has 90 replies. For that reason any pages that are dynamically created (in this case ending in .php rather than .html) can't work that way.

 

[DFrank]

Makes sense; thanks for taking the time to explain that. I'll leave you alone now.

 

[gitchesum]

Another way to save threads would be to subscibe to them. Near the bottom of each thread, there is a link to "Subscribe to this thread" THen when you're wanting to see the thread, just go to your User Control panel and click on subscribed threads and there they are.